


over the picket fence (and into the walls)

by ArcadeGhostAdventurer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Domestic Violence, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Obliviousness, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21995059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcadeGhostAdventurer/pseuds/ArcadeGhostAdventurer
Summary: “You’ll have to forgive my shoddy work with the wallpaper,” Stone said as the movers brought in last of Steve’s boxes and piled them up in the living room, “I had to change them once- Well, after I lost my Omega.”Steve nodded mutely once again, looking at the thick paper that covered the walls, creased in some places. He could remodel to his heart’s content once everything was done.In a couple of minutes, this was going to be his house.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, past - Tiberus Stone/Tony Stark
Comments: 52
Kudos: 231
Collections: POTS (18+) Stony Stocking 2019





	over the picket fence (and into the walls)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaster/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [coaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaster/pseuds/coaster) in the [stony_stocking_2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/stony_stocking_2019) collection. 



> Coaster!!! This is a fill for your Psychological Horror tag! I was initially going to take "What the hell happened to - ?" but you know how sometimes fics have their own minds... Well, yes. That happened. I hope you still enjoy it.
> 
> When I got this idea though, I realized this could be... Only a beginning rather than a fully fledged story. But also if I had attempted writing the entire arc, this would never be ready by the deadline. So, if you guys are interested in more of this, do let me know with a comment! 
> 
> Desdaemona (Longhornletters @ AO3) cheered me on when I was thinking maybe I should let it go and beta-ed twhen I was done, I am so grateful. Any remaining mistakes are all mine.
> 
> !!WARNING!!  
> This fic is very sparingly tagged to not to give away the entire plot. It IS rated T since there are no explicit themes, colorful language or descriptions of violence, HOWEVER if unidentified sounds and smells, descriptions of someone in distress being ignored, a character staying wilfully ignorant, vomiting, power dynamics in relationships, imprisonment and psychological / physical toment trigger or squick you, DO stay away from this fic.

It had been Steve’s dream to have a house. To be fair, there had been other things involved in that dream; a loving Omega he would support and cherish, a dog, kids someday… But the house was a start. Steve just had to remind that to himself. He had to start somewhere, and if it was all by himself… Well, he was just being maudlin now.

The Alpha who sold him the house, Tiberius Stone, had been very proud of how he had modeled the house, sending Steve, who couldn’t yet leave New York, as many photos of the house as he liked. From room layouts and outside of the property, to under the sinks and the inside of the water heater cabinet, Steve had seen it all before purchasing the house remotely.

Still, it wasn’t the same as seeing it all in real life.

There stood the house, pale blue and behind a generic white picket fence. Up close and personal, it all looked pretty tame and ordinary to Steve. And frankly, a little bit tasteless but he had refrained from commenting, in the face of the other Alpha’s enthusiasm.

The garden was rather barren, so they had gone inside immediately as the moving company brought in Steve’s furniture.

Stone had said that he had built the house himself, playing it by ear with the floorplan. But in the end he had picked safety over aesthetics, which ended him up with an unconventionally thick walls and small rooms. That was fine by Steve. He neither had too much furniture nor another person living with him.

That had gotten Stone wistful, “I had built this house for my Omega initially. It was supposed to be a bonding gift, you know,” he had sighed, ”well…” He had gestured stiffly.

Steve had nodded not wanting to pry, but he could understand the man’s inclination to not be here anymore.

“You’ll have to forgive my shoddy work with the wallpaper,” Stone said as the movers brought in last of Steve’s boxes and piled them up in the living room, “I had to change them once- Well, after I lost my Omega.”

Steve nodded mutely once again, looking at the thick paper that covered the walls, creased in some places. He could remodel to his heart’s content once everything was done.

In a couple of minutes, this was going to be his house.

Stone handed him the keys, shook his hand and left in a sleek black car. The moving company took his signature for the last paperwork and drove off.

Steve went inside without looking after the moving truck. Sat down onto a box marked “BOOKS” in big blocky letters and sighed. His body slumped down like that last breath had been the only thing keeping him upright, like an inflatable prop.

He looked around the room with its weirdly placed columns and haphazardly hung wallpaper. He could make it in here. In the memory of the ones who tried to build that dream from scratch, only to abandon it in the hands of a stranger.

Steve got up, turning around to look at his boxes. He could finish the clothes and books all tonight. He was just going to unpack and place them in drawers and shelves after all. Then he could do the kitchen stuff tomorrow as he made breakfast. Leave the paints and brushes in the living room, take them out as he needed them.

And he would be settled in. This would be his new home. He could make it, take it step by step.

This was supposed to be someone’s dream house, he thought to himself. Someone’s dream family with the loving Omega, kids and a dog.

As he placed his reference books and fantasy novels in the bookcases, he could almost imagine the sweet smell of an Omega wafting through the house, elusive.

\---

Steve had been sitting in front of his easel, fluid white drying on the empty canvas as his brain did nothing but play the conversation with his new neighbor from earlier again and again, focused on one single fact: He had died in this house, the Omega.

Steve had taken his morning coffee and had headed to the porch, trying to familiarize himself with the neighbourhood. He had looked around the little neat rows of houses as he held the scalding mug, no matter how much he wanted to go back inside to the little kitchen table that he knew, to what was familiar. This is your home now, he had said to himself, suck it up, get used to it.

“Oh! Hi darling, you’re the one Tiberius sold the house to then,” a middle-aged woman with already coiffed chestnut hair had poked her head above the tall separator between the houses.

Steve had sighed internally, still, had saluted her with his mug. Despite his reluctance to be nagged by nosy neighbours before breakfast, his politeness had won and Steve had been pulled into a conversation.

Did he know Tiberius from before? No. Where had he come from? New York. What was a big city boy like him doing here? Looking to slow down. Did he know what had happened in the house three years ago, oh God such a tragedy it had been. No he didn’t know. And frankly, I don’t want to either, Steve had wanted to say, but couldn’t have.

And now he was sitting here, looking at his prepped canvas going to waste as he thought about a nameless, faceless Omega who died three years ago in this very house.

“He seemed like a sweet boy,” the nosy woman had said, “he didn’t come out much, only with Tiberius. He was quite shy, I guess, but they looked so good together. Fit so well, was a shame, really.”

For three years Stone had lived in this house where his Omega had died. Had it been finally too much? Did he have enough of looking around and seeing memories everywhere? Or had he stayed deliberately? Had he tried to stay close to the Omega he lost for one more day, telling himself this would be the last every time he woke up, only to find himself going to bed without posting an ad?

Steve closed his eyes, only stopping himself from planting face first in the tacky canvas at the last moment, as he slumped over. You’re projecting, he said to himself, stop projecting.

Maybe it hadn’t happened that way. Maybe Tiberius Stone had gotten to hold his Omega’s hand until his untimely end and had now made his peace with it. Maybe Tiberius Stone had been ready to let go, the moment he shook Steve’s hand for the last time on that very porch. Maybe he hasn't looked back since.

Unlike Steve, who had waited a little too long and worked a little too much and in the end he had his name and his illustrations but nothing fulfilling to come back home to.

Steve rubbed a hand over his face and got up, leaving the canvas to fully dry, now that it was apparent that he wasn’t going to be painting anything. He went into the kitchen, took a glass and ran it under water before filling it up and taking a drink.

A smell, like vanilla gone bad, aromatic but with a sharp edge of something noxious to it came and went.

Steve stopped drinking, and smelled the water. That wasn’t it. He turned on the tap again, just in case. The water ran clear. Still, he dumped out the water in his glass, thirst replaced with a queasy feeling in his stomach.

He went to the living room, but there, the room just smelled like linseed oil from his fluid white mixture. He returned to the kitchen, trying to catch the smell.

It was there. Then it was not.

Steve opened the window, breathing in the clean air. Surely, he was imagining. Hallucinating. Maybe moving had whacked up his rut cycle.

He pulled his head back into the house and by then, the smell was gone.

\---

Steve gave up on painting. He woke up way too early and taking his coffee on the porch, standing, ready to duck in the moment the neighbourhood started to wake up. He felt listless and drained at the same time. He hadn’t slept well since he came here. It was almost like something just at the edge of his detection was keeping him awake.

Or, he had been shaken up by the gossip a little too much.

He couldn’t really blame himself though. As an Alpha, he felt powerless, hearing about an Omega and being able to do nothing. For him, it was too similar to the feelings he tried to shake off. His mother dying. Steve, unable to keep the illness at bay, unable to protect her, unable to save her. Sitting by her side at home, feeling useless as he cradled her hand.

He imagined Stone feeling that way too. his Omega dying and being unable to save them. Having to go through the rest of your life, knowing you weren’t enough to keep them safe.

Steve shivered. He didn’t feel like coffee anymore. Hell, he didn’t feel like anything nowadays.

Just restless.

He went back inside, looking down at his coffee, dejected.

He knew what the problem was, Steve realized in a sudden moment of clarity. He stood at the door, looking around in his living room, taking in the barren walls. He didn’t feel at home here. To Steve, this was still someone else’s house.

He went into the kitchen to get rid of his now lukewarm coffee. In all of his previous flats, his office cubicles, and studios, Steve had always decorated the place, made it his own. Whether it was his own artworks or the little bits and pieces he collected from colleagues and favorite artists, he always had colorful walls.

Here, it felt a little bit disrespectful, subconsciously, taping up his sketches on someone else’s walls carelessly.

Though it wasn’t really anyone else’s, was it. These were his walls now.

With newfound enthusiasm, Steve went to look for his tool box.

With some of his older painted canvases and canvas prints under one arm and a hammer in one hand, Steve came back down. He placed everything on his couch and looked around consideringly. This was a good idea. The only good idea he had since moving in, honestly. No wonder he couldn’t paint. His muses did not surround him here. He didn’t feel at home.

He would make this house feel like home. One step at a time.

Deciding on a grid pattern over the largest empty wall, Steve picked up a couple nails in his mouth. He laid his hand on the wall. Soft. Steve pushed. Cushiony. He ran his hands over the expanse of the walls. Were they insulated? Stone hadn’t talked about anything like that. But it was almost like the walls were covered in layers.

Steve pressed in a nail, without hitting, to gauge the layers. The nail pierced through the wall paper. And then some. Half of a thick, long cement wall nail was embedded in the layers of soft material until it hit something solid.

It didn’t quite feel like insulation. It certainly wasn’t just foam. But Steve wasn’t going to rip the walls apart to find that out. The house was… Well, homemade in a sense. If they had used some unconventional material, Steve wasn’t going to mess with that unless it caused problems.

Still, he braced himself for surprises before lifting his hammer and bringing it down on the nail in a solid hit.

Thump.

Steve stopped. Listened. That was not an echo of the sound of the hammer. In fact, the hammer had barely made any sound.

Had he hit too hard? Did the vibrations cause something else to fall? Was that even possible? Maybe.

He lifted the hammer again and hit. Once. Twice.

And oh God. When it hit him, the acrid smell of fear, Steve almost doubled over, instincts raging. Burnt vanilla under a hazy cloud of something akin ammonia and putrid smoke. Something vile was wafting through the house.

And then the crying began.

It was almost like a wave of sound. There, but not really. Muffled. Still, loud in the way that alarms and alert signals are. Danger, danger, danger.

Everything that made Steve an Alpha in his prime was screaming at him, standing in attention to the cues of an Omega in distress.

I am hallucinating, Steve told himself. This isn’t real.

He tried to will his body to move, to get out of the house. He was bolted to this place, an almost palpable weight on his shoulders keeping him there. One hand still on the nail, embedded into the wall and hammer in the air.

He let it fall to the floor, nearly missing his foot. The sudden thud of the hammer hitting the floor broke his petrified reverie.

Steve scrambled away from the wall, away from this cloud of vile smell and the moaning cries and the house. He threw himself out of the front door and onto the porch.

Outside, the sun was shining.

Children were waiting for the school bus a couple of houses over. Next door was washing plates in the sink. Down the street, someone was mowing their lawn.

Steve Rogers was standing on his porch, heaving and contemplating: Are ghosts real?

The smell of green grass in the morning tickled his abused nose. He got away from the door. Got off the porch. Laid down on the damp grass.

To hell with the neighbours, he thought, I do what I want. This is my lawn.

As he came back to himself, Steve realized he was shaking. His entire body trembling. He laid there, looking at the blue sky, the clouds passing by. He couldn’t bring himself to get up. He couldn’t bring himself to go in.

There had to be a logical explanation to all of this, but thoughts were slippery. His head turned, not unlike a bad case of vertigo. He was scared shitless still. Adrenaline sucked up every reasonable thing his brain came up with like a black hole.

Was the smell embedded into whatever the wall padding was? But who had scared an Omega that bad? For the smell to sink in like that. That permanently.

But the crying. It hadn't even sounded human. Almost like a dog that had been beaten and left outside.

Steve shuddered, suddenly acutely aware of the hard ground underneath him, the wetness that had been seeping through his clothes.

He sat up. He was going to tear down the wallpaper. Not now. Not today. But he was going to take it all apart and he was going to paint the walls all over again.

A fresh start for the house itself. His house, God damn it.

Inside, the acrid smell lingered. Steve opened all the windows, sitting in the living room with a blanket over his shoulders.

The silence was deafening.

He listened all night for another clue of a sound, laid in bed with the whisper of a smell in his nose. Vanilla, underneath it all.

But there was nothing. Steve couldn’t sleep anyway.

\---

It came the next night, when he was least expecting.

A little hiss of clothing, a brush against the walls. Just the hint of a sound and he was pulled away from dreamland.

Creaking of a board and Steve was awake.

Steve laid in bad, ramrod straight and unmoving in the darkness. Listening. It was almost like a weight, an invisible demon, sat on his chest. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move.

His mind addled with sleep, he wondered if this was it. A ghost, a deadly apparition would be the end of him. The remainders of an Omega who went into this house with hopes for a sweet and easy life and had never been able to get out again, traversing his grounds that never belonged to Steve in the first place.

You’re having sleep paralysis, said the logical part of his brain, these, the sounds, are a hallucination caused by your superstitions and your vulnerable state.

It did nothing to help slow the beating of his heart, trying to rip through his chest.

Limb by limb, feeling came back to his body. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Drowsiness left him like fog dissipating.

The sounds remained.

From somewhere inside the house, they echoed faintly. Only when he stood still, Steve could hear them, almost inaudible over his own blood rushing in his ears. Irregular footsteps that dragged through the house, stopping and then starting again.

As if it was also listening, gauging the reactions from its surroundings, making sure no one followed it and then continuing its travel.

Keeping a tab on Steve.

Steve slowly pushed away the covers. Bare footed, he slowly crept to the door, pressed his ear to the wood. Listened.

There it was, little swoosh-thump swoosh-thumps of erratic feet. In his house. Downstairs.

He braced himself. Carefully turning the knob, Steve pulled the door open, made his way downstairs.

One step down. Stop. Listen. Barely breathing, one step more. Stop. Listen.

The irregular walking had turned into little tinkerings by the time Steve had made it downstairs. Coming from the kitchen, it was reminiscent of a rather large rodent looking for food.

Please be a rat, Steve thought. Please be a huge rat. A rat the size of my head.

He couldn’t bodily go in there, he just couldn’t. From here to the front door, maybe three seconds. Shouldering it open, maybe five. Ten seconds tops, he could get out of the house. On tiptoes and legs tight, Steve braced himself for running. Extended a shaky hand into the kitchen where the tinkering was getting louder still, he flipped the light switch on.

His empty kitchen looked back at him. But the smell, God, the smell hit him like a sledgehammer.

It was visceral. A loud thump echoed in the room, making Steve jump out of his skin. Then the entire kitchen was filled with the pungent smell he remembered from the day before.

Ammonia. Smoke. Acidic. Vanilla under it all, begging to be released.

Steve doubled over, still at the door. He retched once, twice. Barely reached the kitchen sink before emptying the contents of his stomach into the basin.

He took a heaving breath. The smell, even stronger now, almost like a mist, filled his nose and mouth, covered his taste buds. Steve continued puking.

Then the crying started.

If Steve had closed his eyes, he would have said here, someone is crying right here, beside me.

It wasn’t the sobbing kind of cry. There was no force behind it. Just the pathetic mewlings of somebody who could do nothing but cry with nothing to lose and nothing to gain. Crying hopelessly, out of instinct.

Combined with the smell, it undid Steve.

He crumpled down onto the kitchen tiles whole body shaking. In some corner of his mind, he knew come morning, he would be angry at himself, thinking this was the most ridiculous shit to ever happen to him. He would have cursed his own mind, his easily addled brain, his endless vulnerability in the face of an Omega, despite being mentioned only in passing.

But that was Steve and he would go down onto his knees and weep on the kitchen floor for some other Alpha’s dead Omega.

Or maybe he was crying for his own dead and gone dreams. This place, this hellhole of a house making him act out his worst nightmares, as if it had been him who lost a partner. As if he had any right to this pain he was feeling.

Surrounded by little moans that slowly faded away, Steve sat there, going numb both bodily and mentally until the daylight mixed with the lamp he had no energy to turn off.

\---

The sounds, he could take. The trepidation that never left him as long as he was in the house. The constant state of alert, in his own home, his sanctuary. But the smell. That whisper of a smell was going to drive him crazy.

It followed.

Throughout the house, burnt vanilla tickled his nose. Steve tried to make sense of it, tried to find where it was coming from. Pressed his nose to the floorboards, to the wallpaper he still couldn’t find the courage to tear down; breathed in that damp smell that rubbed him the wrong way.

There was no clue to where the smell was coming from. One moment, it was there, swimming through the air to reach him. If Steve moved to suddenly, if he made loud noises, it got sharper. Then it disappeared mysteriously.

Until it reappeared, almost curious in the way it would come back slowly, in waves.

Steve felt his lungs burning. Either his head swam from taking big gulps of air, trying to get some more of that smell in or his chest ached from a constant, conscious effort to try and take the smallest breaths, trying to shun the smell.

But the worst thing was, every time he opened his mouth, he knew without a doubt that these were Omega pheromones.

Steve Googled the shit out of ways to get rid of smells. He boiled coffee. Wiped the floors with said coffee.

It didn’t work.

He Googled “what to do if my house is haunted”. He burned the sage he ripped out of herbal tea bags.

For the blissful moments the sage burnt and spread its heady, thick smoke around, there was no Omega smell. No other smell other than sweet smoke that he welcomed.

After the hazy smoke dissipated, burnt vanilla came to his nose. Floating through the air right out of his reach.

Steve threw the porcelain dish full of ashes across the wall. It hit in a dull thud. Didn’t break. The burnt edge of the vanilla got sharper, acrid.

God, Steve really needed to tear down that wallpaper.

Steve got up. Restless. Paced the living room. He caught his faded out reflection on the windows. In the faint reproduction of his mirrored image, he could see the deep valley between his brows, the dark purple that circled his eyes. He shivered, turning away from his distorted face.

He was standing on the edge of his sanity, ready to fall. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t go out. What felt like an escape, now meant his mind staying back home while his body moved, his rationality thinning out the further away he got.

His dream, his new beginning, crumbled around him the more he stayed in this place. But God, oh God he couldn’t leave.

He was haunted by the moaning cries of a nameless, shapeless Omega in his dreams, whenever he drifted off. Just out of his reach. Where he couldn’t comfort them, scrambled like the useless Alpha that he was.

And the smell haunted him when he awoke.

Suddenly, Steve was exhausted. The anger left him. The anxiety drained away. He was tired. Bone deep, crushingly tired. He swayed on his feet. He turned towards the staircase. His head was empty. No thoughts formed in his brain. Even his own footsteps were too loud.

Steve gave up. He sat down in the middle of the stairs, put his head into his hands.

The lack of sleep, energy, the fact that he hadn't been able to eat hit him, slowly took over him. He swayed where he sat. Vanilla wafted around him, surrounding him, getting more and more powerful the more he sat.

It was like sinking into sleep at last. Steve closed his eyes.

For a while, he must have actually fallen asleep. When he came to himself with a jolt, the sun was setting, painting the curtains down in the living room a purplish blue. His ass was numb. His legs filled with static.

The house had gotten colder, thanks to the windows he had left open to let the smell out. But that was the only reason why Steve could feel the minute difference between his right and left side.

From his right, the side that faced the wall, came a slight warmth. As if someone had been sitting in the slight space between him and the wall. And they had just vacated it.

Sleep addled, Steve reached out a hand, unthinking, and touched the wall.

Warmth. For a moment, his cold hand leached the glorious heat from the wall. It took a sharp turn in the warm vanilla that surrounded him and a bang that resounded throughout the house to bring Steve back into the reality where walls were not inexplicably warm.

He scrambled away from the wall, almost toppling over the banister in his panic, hitting his midriff in a way that would surely leave a nasty bruise. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t make a sound or produce a thought. He ran upstairs in a frenzy, got into his bedroom and slammed the door closed.

Steve shook. Adrenaline coursed through him. His eyes burned with unshed tears. Bile came all the way up to his throat, stinging but he pushed it back. His ribs hurt where he had flung himself onto the banister, pain pulsing with every breath he took.

He should have run downstairs, not up, Steve realized. He could have gotten out of the house. He could have gotten into his God damned car and left, but no. He had locked himself up into the house with whatever that thing was.

God, he realized with absolute horror washing over him like ice cold water, there is something in the walls.

He went up to the door. Locked it once, twice. Ran to the windows and closed the hatches.

He wouldn’t be able to sleep. There was no way to make sure it wouldn’t be able to reach him. But still, this was all he could do.

Steve took a deep breath.

He didn’t have much choice. He could leave. Say fuck it to the money he poured into buying the house and moving in and just, get away.

But he could have done that days ago. He could have done that the first time he had been surrounded with weird smells and unexplained sounds.

He wasn’t going to back down now.

He had big hammers in his closet. Left over from the times he made his own frames. What was a wall to a hammer, swung with the helpless anger that brewed in him for days now.

Steve laid down on the bed, listening to the telltale sounds he knew would come. He gripped the handle of the hammer in his hands.

He refused to be terrorized in his own house.

\---

He heard the first of the cotton soft steps drifting somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Immediately brought back to reality, Steve tightened his grip on the hammer in his fist, grounding himself.

It was the same pattern as the previous nights. Little steps, carefully placed with uneven gaps in between. Almost careful. Almost calculating.

Did ghosts remember danger? The way they went or got stuck in between? What would scare somebody, if they were already dead? Could ghosts still feel pain?

Did they remember the houses they built and the rooms they decorated with the hope of a lifetime in them only to have that dream stolen? The rug pulled under them, did they traverse the world of living, scrambling to find a way to be with material beings again?

Steve slowly rose from his bed and walked up to the door.

Barely eating. Almost never sleeping. Having no thoughts other than the thoughts of death and pain, he was at the end of his resolve here.

He couldn’t take it. Not anymore. This was no way to be living.

It was all going to end tonight.

He slowly descended the stairs, hammer in hand and raised up high already. His arms shook with the idea of swinging it down, breaking the wall, ending it all.

Freeing whatever that was haunting his house.

His mind. His soul.

He was so close now, he could almost pinpoint the place the tinkering was coming from. A little below his waistline, as if someone’s hands were feeling along the planes of wood that made the house.

Trying, testing, looking for a way to get out.

Along the kitchen wall, Steve positioned himself. He could hear it now. One step, two steps. Wait. Listen. Just one step until it was right in front of him.

Delirious with the possibility of a modicum of normalcy, Steve brought the hammer down fast and sure.

It tore through the wallpaper. Layers upon layers of thick, heavy wallpaper divided with foam. Wood underneath it splintered. The walls, the middle of the walls were hollow.

An animalistic scream came through the crack, piercing before it cut off with unnatural abruptness. Like a dog howling until it remembered its commands. The burning smell of Omega in distress poured out of the hole in the wall, along with a disgusting smell of decay and humidity.

The hammer dislodged from the wall. It came back bloody.

“Fuck,” Steve whispered to himself. The hammer dropped from his hands, “oh God fuck.”

Unthinkingly, he attacked the wall with his bare hands, ripping and tearing. Wallpaper layers resisted the most, but the wood was softened in the damp air of whatever was in the cavity of the walls.

His hands tore on the splinters. His skin ripped. His hand caught a particularly long piece of wood panel. He pulled.

The wall came apart.

There, in the barely foot wide gap in the wall was an Omega male, stick thin and dirty, curled up on the floor, trembling and weeping.

His shoulder was bruised and bleeding. Steve had made that.

Steve stood there, looking at the view in front of him, bits and pieces from the past days flying through his mind. Blaming, blaming, blaming. Always blaming. Blaming the house. The noises. The smell.

Doubting his own fucking sense of smell when it had been trying to tell him there was an Omega in distress right under his nose.

Literally under his nose.

Steve crumpled before him. The Omega started crying more forcefully. Steve suddenly thought, he was probably expecting to be dragged out. Beaten.

Or worse. Sealed up again.

He was a fucking idiot. The biggest idiot that had ever graced the earth.

Oh God, the neighbors.

No one had seen Stone’s Omega in the last three years. Because Tony had been dead for the last three years. For three years, people came inside the house, talked to Stone, shook his hand, made small talk with him and felt sorry about this poor lonely Alpha who had lost his-

“I had built this house for my Omega initially. It was supposed to be a bonding gift, you know,” he had sighed, ”well…”

For the last three years, Tony had been inside this dark cavern, carved out by the one person who was responsible for protecting him.

Tiberius Stone had planned this. Had planned this so meticulously, so insidiously. Had built this house with the gaps and secret passages in mind. For one reason only.

Steve’s mind didn’t work that way. He swayed in the darkness, ruined wall and crying Omega still right in front of him.

“Tony?”

Crying stopped immediately.

“Tony?” Steve tried to be gentler.

The Omega curled up even further into himself if that was possible. Steve didn’t want to touch him. That was a lie. Steve wanted to pull him in, apologize. Keep apologizing for the rest of his life for being so wrapped up in his own made up suffering to recognize Tony’s.

He repeated the name, putting an edge of Alpha into his voice, “Tony.”

Dark eyes met his for a fleeting second before being tightly closed again. It almost seemed like the Omega was bracing himself.

To hell with it, Steve thought, you were so ready to take on the netherworld, face your own reality now.

He reached into the cracked wall, gently pulling the Omega through the splintered wood.

It was like holding a bag of bones, very stiffly tied together. He clearly favored the shoulder Steve ruined with the hammer. His stomach lurched.

He carried his precious cargo into the kitchen. He didn’t open the lights, not wanting to shock the Omega’s eyes after God knows how long in that dark hole. He placed Tony onto the floor, positioning him so that his back was supported by the cupboard.

He picked up a glass from the cupboard. His hands left bloody prints on it. Turning on the tap, he discarded the stained glass. Ran his hand under cold water, then picked up another glass, filling it up.

When he crouched down to press the glass onto Tony’s lips, they remained tightly sealed. His eyes didn’t open either.

Steve sighed. Putting the glass on the counter, he pulled the Omega back up and onto the counter. It was very hard, maneuvering with how stiff he was, but he managed to sit him on the granite top.

“Look,” he said, taking the glass back and dumping it out into the sink, then he turned on the tap, “Tony, look. It’s clean. Tap water. Look.”

The Omega watched him wash the glass for a good thirty second before twitching. Steve filled it up again and brought it to his lips.

Tony attacked the glass of water.

“Slowly,” Steve said, trying to pace him. He asked once it was done, “want another one?”

The Omega nodded imperceptibly.

Steve gave him another glass of water.

An uncomfortable silence came over them. Tony trembled, still stiff against his chest. He was in a tank top and some ratty sweatpants. The house was cold with the windows constantly open. Steve knew he should bring him something to wear.

He couldn’t let him go though, clammy hands holding onto the bony shoulders, muscles jumping under Steve’s hands now and then.

The bloody shoulder seeped into his shirt. His own hands left barely there pink drops on Tony’s skin.

He wanted to do everything now. He wanted to take Tony to a hospital. He wanted to clean him. Feed him. Call the police. Call a lawyer. Find Stone and sink his fist right in the middle of his face until his face stopped existing.

“I legally bought this house from-” he couldn’t bring himself to say the name, “from him about a week ago.”

Tony started weeping again, almost inaudible, but Steve was so close now. So fine tuned to catch those little whispers.

“I don’t know where he went and I don’t know what he planned, but I promise you,” he cupped Tony’s face, running his hand over the matted beard, lightly tipping his face so he would look at Steve, “I promise he is never going to touch you again.”

Steve knew the moment the Omega’s chin started to tremble, he was already gone. He didn’t know where to start. He didn’t know what they would do, where they would go from here, come morning.

He thought, lawyer first. Then a trip to hospital. Then whatever the hell life would throw at them. But hell, Steve was going to find a way.

A light trickle of vanilla, not burned but soft, almost creamy came to his nose. He looked down to see the Omega, Tony, nodding off as seldom sob rocked him. Exhaustion. Adrenaline wearing off.

Steve could feel himself sagging too.

Still, the shoulder wound would need cleaning, he thought. He could also cook while he slept. Tony must have been hungry. What would be appropriate to feed somebody who was starved, he didn’t know. He didn’t even know if he had anything suitable in the kitchen. He fumbled for a second, mind drawing blank as he stood in his small kitchen with a sleeping Omega propped up against his chest.

He didn’t know many things, to be completely honest. He looked down again. After doubting the truth under his nose for so long, so selfishly focused on himself, he owed Tony a happy ending.

For the resilient little thing in his arms who lived through hell and came out fighting, he would find a way.

**Author's Note:**

> Final Note: 
> 
> Would you believe it, this fic was NOT inspired by "The Hellbound Heart", Clive Barker's horror / gothic book that inspired the critically acclaimed horror movie "Hellraiser" that has similar themes about a person / entity being locked in the walls of a house BUT was inspired by a fucking YouTube video from the gaming channel CallMeKevin, in which Kevin actually builds a house with hollow walls in Sims 4 and makes another family live in there. Yeah.


End file.
